Narrowboatboy’s Big, Bad Blog...Narrowboat & Travel blog based on Lancaster Canal

As the last of the dried up turkey is shoved under a crust and the merry throng of swearing, inebriated louts bring in the New Year by letting off fireworks in our wheelie-bin, snapping off the top of the towns Christmas tree and pissing and fighting in the alleyways on their way home from the taverns and cells,  the cold, empty streets are cold and empty once more....thank God! It’s over... It’s a New Year so it requires a new positive approach, from me at least...who else can you rely on to lead the way into a new decade? My old-age ailments prevented me at the back end of last year from the early qualifying rounds of the Worlds Strongest Man. So as I sit on the sofa and enjoy the final I am reminded during the adverts that I should also think about an over 50’s plan as my untimely death now approaches fast anyway. I should now focus on whether I can afford the box of matches to light the flames or alternatively do I consider ordering an artisan willow weaved box ...

First it started with.... I am using a friends car and today I notice on the dashboard a yellow light warning me about something...oh, sounds serious, you may say, what is it?....well, il be buggered if I know. So the question I have is “why isn’t it obvious?”...why can’t it just say what the problem is?....instead some stupid symbol that looks to me like its warning ⚠️ me that Iv run over a bloody hedgehog 🦔... Now I know that some patronising clever prick will retort “ you just need to look in the vehicle user manual...”.... NO !...I Don’t...why should I have to do this?...just make it clear to the user/driver what the problem is instead of putting the emphasis on me to read your stupid boring book you muppet manufacturers. While I’m on the subject, I’m sick to death of the worlds over-complicated technology and I think it needs to come to an end...not the world, God forbid, just the stupidness and pointless stuff in it.... Such as... the hours and hours wa...

So far, I have refrained to even go here but as Lewis Capaldi once said back in 1871 The time has come,' the Walrus said,       To talk of many things: Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —       Of cabbages — and kings — And why the sea is boiling hot —       And whether pigs have wings.' As the autumnal clocks tick by and the signs of another summer diminish you can be sure that next week summertime officially ends and a few days after the clocks change the chosen path of ostracising ourselves from the EU also takes effect....Personally it’s a very sad day. I think we have been shafted fantastically by the politics and the career politicians with a massive social wedge driven through the hearts and minds of a confused lonely and totally split down the middle country.  Ok, so we weren’t happy with the unelected European Parliament...Thats why we had members and veto...

The other day a car pulled up in the car park, a big sweaty hunting guy dressed in combat gear opened the boot and a crowd gathered to marvel at what he had in his boot...I couldn’t resist...was it a dead body, an animal or maybe a kidnap victim??...I went over to look and sure enough it was quite a spectacle...not quite what I was expecting but nevertheless we were all impressed with his massive haul of freshly picked porcini mushrooms! Yes, it’s definitely that autumnal time of the year when the flavoursome porcini grow wild and abundantly in the woods. I mentioned this incident to a friend who then told me that his elderly mother had even found some in the woods so that was that...my mind was made up and the next morning I would set off to find my own treasures. Hey, if an overweight sweaty bloke and a doddery old woman can find them then this would be a piece of piss for an old mountain goat like me.! I’d heard that they grew high in the hills so the following morning ...

So today, Friday 13th, has been the second and final day of the 2019 Vendemmia for the organic Syrah wine of the Doveri Cantina, near to Cortona. An early six o clock start saw us sipping coffee and munching creme- pastries, a usual pastime before a busy morning in the vineyard....and was it busy, wow....In the cool of the morning I watched many big strong, rough looking girls and boys scurrying up and down the rows, snipping away at the bunches of ripe grapes as the morning sun came up and before long the crates were overflowing and were being loaded on the awaiting truck. I thought it best, as a non paid-up union member, not to get too involved so I took on a self-appointed overseeing management role otherwise I’m sure I could have lost a finger or two or worse, at the bottom of one of the longer rows where no-one would have heard my pathetic whimpering screams. So, after an hour or so watching (managing) this impressive spectacle of organised labour the boss and I returned...

There are probably a number of folk out there that have a fair bit of wine knowledge but as some wise old scabby pigeon once told me “you never stop learning...” so I thought I’d share my wine experiences and knowledge with you as this week we had the Vendemmia...the Italian word used only for the harvest of grapes for wine production. Per  vendemmia  si intende la raccolta delle uve da vino, in quanto nel caso delle uve da tavola si usa semplicemente il termine raccolta. This in short is the day when the grapes are declared as ready for harvesting as they can be, the moons is in the right phase and the man from Del Monte has said  “YES”.  At this point in time you need a crowd of folk to pick them, some clean plastic crates to put them in and a big truck to take them back to the ‘Cantina’ for processing...and just for all you wine romantics il just quash this notion right now....it’s hot, sweaty and hard graft to fill up the crates in the hot suns...

Im sorry Father but it’s been nearly a year since my last confession...well 9 months or so...the time it takes to make a baby👶 , grow an avocado 🥑 , mature a wine🍷 , develop an ulcer🤷🏿‍♀️....errr, or none of the above.  Yes, I returned to the sunshine state of Tuscany 🇮🇹in the deep south of the Mediterranean homesick blues and have been here that long, contemplating and capitulating life as we know it. So now, as we head out of the summer sun and into the autumnal shade I thought that maybe it’s about the right time to put finger to keyboard again and spend a small amount of my loose time lolling about with my creative thoughts to blog critical comment and witty repartee as and when the mood takes me. So I looked back at my last post for a reference point to start from and saw the world at the time of my last post was being slated for being in such a mess, so, a good nine months on I’m glad all that is now behind us and the future is now looking incredibly ros...